Possession
by Lawrence Fitzroy
Summary: Sookie is tired of being manipulated, and used, and treated like the porcelain heroine of an Edwardian novel. Eric understands her all too well.
1. Chapter 1

Something about her legs made it hard for him to breathe. He need not breathe regardless, it was true, and yet a tremor in the red matter of his undead being was evoked, or perhaps invoked, every damn time she walked into his sight. The line of her legs was a promise of tension, twisting and torsion, of the soft pull of skin on skin. The knot of her knees contained more sensuality than had every one of the moments in which every girl he'd ever fucked fell apart into a moaning, quivering mess around him. Her arch of her ankles entranced him as they paced towards him, and as he felt the pull of each muscle in the litheness of her gait.

'Sookie. What a surprise.' It wasn't, of course. He had felt the decreasing distance between them deep in his primal cortex, in the same way he felt subliminally the setting of the sun in bloody hues.

'I did suspect you sat in that throne all the time, even when the bar's not open. Always good to have stuff confirmed. Your ego is inspiring, Eric.' Her eyes were dusty gauntlets, challenging him, measuring him, carefully resisting him.

'To what do I owe the pleasure?' he grinned ferally as he mangled his words with a barely discernable Nordic contortion of pitch and assonance. Sookie settled into the bite of it.

'No reason. I mean, can't a girl want a drink?'

'I seem to recall a delightful, parochial and family-friendly establishment in the charming shithole you call Bon Temps.'

'Everything at Merlotte's was broken again in the latest series of extraordinary supernatural catastrophes. For a change.' She folded down into the nearest chair. The stripper pole cast a black shadow across her profile, and he could see her exhaustion in the slump of her shoulders.

'And I'm sure you've noticed Fangtasia has yet to open. For another couple hours.'

'Suppose I wasn't paying attention to the time.' Her eyes flickered to the tapping of his long fingers on the arm of his throne.

'Better off supposing I wasn't a thousand year old vampire bored by your prattle. Or perhaps the fangbanging is affecting your IQ? I heard something about that on the TV just the other day. Humans – so insightful.'

'Eric Northman, you are an ass.' Her tone lacked any of her usual indignance. He almost missed the self-righteous spark of insult in her eyes, and how easy she could be to rile.

'I do wish I could say I hadn't heard that one before. But don't worry, Sookie, it's less that you're singularly uninventive when it comes to cussing, and more that I am – how to put it – a scoundrel.'

He winked, ran a hand through his hair, and then leant back, closing his eyes. To all appearances, it looked as though he had forgotten he was not alone. He returned to his thoughts, carefully rejecting the beat of the extraordinary heart before him to muse on her hypothetically and less dangerously. Sookie's self-delusion amused him endlessly. The combination of her coquettish innocence with the frank sex of her body and her scent and the lines and planes and curves of her – she must have to fight her nature every second, restrain herself, soften herself, her whole life a long pause, a painful exercise in repression, he thought. It wound a tight coil under his navel that pulsed like an aneurysm. His jaws ached with the weight of his teeth.

'Did I mention wanting a drink?' Even with his eyes closed, Eric could see the arch of her eyebrow.

'Did I ever mention being a bartender?'

'Well then, I guess I'll help myself.'

He listened to the soft patter of her feet as she ducked under the bar, and the splash of liquor in a scratched shot glass. His blood sang quietly inside him whenever she moved nearer, because it knew her insides so intimately. It had traced the delicate filigrees of her circulation, from fingertips to lungs to cunt to jugular, and had swollen and raced and figuratively frozen along with hers. How absurd, to be jealous of what was, in essence, himself. She swallowed, and the knot below his navel hardened painfully, and then the pour of – of whisky, he smelt, rang out again.

'Eric,' Sookie paused, as though gathering her strength, 'can I ask you a question?'

'You have.'

She muttered something angry and unintelligible, paced back to her seat in the stark shadows, and started again. 'Why do vampires have to claim ownership of things?'

Eric pulled up slowly, mind racing down various avenues of possibility and potential. He weighed his words carefully. 'There is no "have to".'

'Seems to me there is. You do it with people all the time.'

'People are food. Even humans don't like to share their food.' He grinned widely, and his teeth ached more insistently.

'Humans also don't like to be owned.' Her lips were a pornographic moue of discontent that he could only watch with hardly veiled hunger.

'That's a lie if there ever was one. Humans die without ownership – your entire identities are constructed around being owned by your dynasties or your friends or your sports teams or your church. The whole idea of belonging or allegiance is just a desperate and pathetic attempt to rebrand the susceptibility of humans to servitude. And don't give me some shit about the abolition of slavery. We're in Louisiana, remember.'

'I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do not want to be owned, by anyone, ever, in any way. So,' she smiled triumphantly, 'fuck you, Eric, and your crude analysis of an entire species.'

'You could have just said that you needed relationship advice,' he replied knowingly.

'I beg your pardon.'

'Clearly you're angry with Bill Compton for being possessive. You are exceedingly easy to read, and that was before you so kindly drank my blood. What I don't understand is why you thought a Viking would be any more enlightened with regards to the female sex.'

'Maybe it's because you're the only acquaintance of mine with large quantities of accessible liquor.' He watched her tilt her shot glass dismissively on the table and the way the dregs of golden whiskey caught the dim light.

'Or maybe it's because I'm the only person you know who recognises you to be one of the most powerful and singularly dangerous people to walk this earth: who sees clearly your unscrupulous pragmatism, your relativistic moral code, your frighteningly puritanical, yet somehow selfish, principles, your carefully checked sexuality, and the raw force of your bloodline, as well as your superficial charm, intoxicating blood and your,' he smirked, eyes wandering, 'nice rack.'

Her eyes flashed. 'Perhaps it's because I'm curious.' Her tone was terrifyingly callous.

'What do you mean?'

Sookie spoke deliberately, precisely. 'Maybe I enjoy watching you carefully reveal how well you understand the intricacies of me in the absolutely desperate hope that I fall, spineless and trembling, at your feet. Unfortunately, having someone else tell me that I'm a selfish bitch – something I know already – doesn't get me all hot. Eric, I've had enough of being had, and used, and manipulated. If you knew me so well, you might have realised that.'

The air was leaden and unmoving. Eric's fingers stopped absently tracing the upholstery of his throne, stilling like cold, white spiders preparing to pounce. Sookie stood.

'You knew I was healing when you decided to suck the silver out of me, didn't you.' It wasn't a question; instead a keen edged statement that sunk between them.

'Yes.' She turned to go at the unnecessary confirmation.

'That wasn't surrender or submission, Sookie. I think you realise that.' His gaze caught hers, steely, unblinking. 'Except in the sense that consent is surrendering to your own desires. You wanted to heal, to share, to feel, to rebel against Bill too, probably. You are your own and only master in all of this. But you don't need me to tell you that like a wise kung-fu master in a bad Hollywood remake.'

'Dare I ask about the martial arts reference?'

'Ask Pam someday.'

'I'm sure she'd love that.'

The resonance of their bodies – the harmonic sympathy, he thought, and smiled wryly – had been honed night after night in their lurid, humid dreams of arching and stifled moaning. He could feel the changing pace of her hummingbird heartbeat. She stood so still, under the shadow of the ridiculous pole, under the heat of his gaze. He ran his hand through his hair again.

'Fuck, Sookie,' he muttered, rough and unhinged by the pounding of pulse in his temples, wrists and groin.

'Come here, Eric.'

He stood before her in the blurred shimmer of motion that was the dark irony of rigor mortis death, shoulders and torso curved around the area she inhabited. She didn't blink. Pushing up onto the balls of her feet, she pushed away the negative space between them, and he folded around her, pulling the tight knit of her back and muscles and ribcage into himself, hard against the tautness of him.

Their kiss was like the inevitable culmination of lifetimes of self-obliterating longing. It was hard and sharp and bruising – the collision of stars. They were nothing but viscera panting to be united. There was no surrender or soft curves – only triumph. Eric's fangs snapped out, and Sookie felt the euphoria of his release and trembled in anticipation. She could feel his hands everywhere, fingers hard against her shoulder blades and the angle of her waist. Stepping back, she tugged her dress off over her head. Eric's eyes raked her body.

'Your hair's loose,' he murmured, twisting a lock around his fingers. Sookie frowned in reply, tugging at his shirt. He shed it in an instant, stepping into her again, kissing her frantically, hands charged against her bare skin. She felt aflame, alight.

'Too goddamn tall,' she muttered against his mouth. He had her pressed against the bar in a second, and wrapped her legs around his hips. Her body stuttered into his, overwhelmed by sensation, by the heady pound and pulse of the moment. She pulled at his belt buckle and felt a smile quirk his lips pressed against her clavicle.

'Please! Watching my Maker and my least favourite half-breed dry hump against my bar like horny pre-teens after half a cider has never been high on my list of priorities. We open in five.' Pam swept out, leaving Sookie and Eric sprawled and twined.


	2. Chapter 2

Sookie sat at the bar in her crumpled sundress and dipped into the minds of those around her. The exuberant hedonism of it all pulled her mouth into a twisted half smile. The delirious sex of the place was both revolting and enticing, much like sweat or lipstick stains on a highball: too much was tacky, but sometimes it could set the senses reeling. It was a vortex of voyeurism, with the telepath watching the clientele watch each other and the dancers and their ever-disappearing drinks, and everyone involved, bar maybe the drinks, feeling the heady heat of inspection. And she could feel Eric's eyes on her, and the thought made her flush.

The gaudy unashamedness of the place made the flow of neural data less overwhelming to Sookie, and the occasional realisation that a thought was addressed towards her kept her firmly tied into herself. _Look at her hair when the red light catches it. Could she be a vamper? Imagine tracing circles on her thighs. I could make her moan my name._ She was tethered to the turmoil of music and alcohol and body-fuelled fantasy – or was it _fang_ tasy? Maybe proximity to vampires also brings bad puns and me closer together, she hypothesised, remembering the glass in her hand and bringing it to her lips.

Eric watched Sookie sip absently, eyes wide and unfocused, brows lightly furrowed. The bass skipped and thudded, depositing its information load of deep, dark frequency in his chest, almost mimicking a human heartbeat. Sliding and gyrating, the dancers' canted hips and softly twisting hair, all rotating around the vertical stripes of the stripper poles, framed his view of his bar ( _turning and turning in the widening gyre… things fall apart,_ Eric thought, and rolled the Yeats around his mind). Their dances were all angles of hips and spines receding into inviting curves, endless spirals of titillation. At the centre, in cinematic outline, Sookie sat, enveloped in the discords of nightlife. He felt her pulse, somewhere between _allegro ma non troppo_ and _vivace_. It snared its way into the ruckus and wove a delicate threat of vitality through the dull heat, even as she sat quiet and upright.

Not too long ago, that dress was by my feet, Eric mused. He recalled the exquisite contrast of the peach lace against her soft chest, the way her black – _panties_ , he thought, and his smirk widened – had sat over her hip bones and taut stomach, the coil of her spare musculature, and the lithe vulnerability of all that flawless skin. His perfect memory held the smell, the feel, the beauty of her in his mind's eye, savouring its sweetness. And yet, he wondered, her presence on my barstool is holding me enraptured. _I'm fucked._ She is as incapable of being a past conquest as I am of looking away from her, because her very being holds promise. Naked, writhing, clothed, still, she holds me.

Sookie sensed a shocked pause in the minds around her in the negligible moment before she heard Eric's voice in her ear.

'I was lying, earlier, when I suggested that vampires desire ownership less than humans hunger for it.'

The psychic babble resumed. Sookie turned, a smile playing on her lips, 'I think you might have cottoned on to the subtext of our conversation, though.'

Settling himself in a barstool with an awkward bend of his long limbs, Eric frowned and ignored her comment. 'I cannot speak for anyone but myself. Regardless, I know I wanted to possess you more hungrily and lecherously than you can imagine. It was satisfyingly in keeping with all the base elements of my nature and the behaviour of weaker vampires around me. Despite everything I said to you earlier, that is also my confession.'

'You just said that you wanted to possess me, past tense.' Sookie looked into his eyes as though seeking out his soul, although Eric knew she'd find nothing there but old optic nerves and dust. 'Sounds like you think something's changed.'

'The way I feel – looking at you, touching you, desiring you, talking to you – is too unlike anything else I know to be a product of my instincts, base or no.' He laughed bitterly, 'I feel genuine interest and curiosity. You have no idea how strange that is.'

'Curiosity? About a – a gash in a sundress? Unimaginable,' Sookie grinned.

'What I'm trying to say is something along the pathetic lines of: I enjoy your company. Shot me.'

Sookie giggled, took a deep breath as though trying to control herself, and then snorted.

'Sookie? Did you just snort?'

'Maybe I did, Eric Northman.'

'Derisive snorting. There's something I never expected from you.'

'I never expected to hear awkward confessions of humanity from you.'

Eric held her eyes suddenly, and then dropped his fangs. She heard the slash and snicker of them, and saw the way they indented his lower lip. His lower lip – she tried to break his gaze, but it grew dark and hot.

'Don't make the mistake of thinking me declawed and safe, Sookie Stackhouse. I am still an old creature of viscera, death and nighttime. My single redeeming quality is my l– my feelings for you, and even they cannot absolve me from the things I have done.'

'What worries me, Eric Northman, is that I embrace your darkness. I think I recognise it in myself.' She looked away.

'Sookie, I'm not – I can't soothe your fears or allay your self-doubt. I have as little power to absolve others as I have to absolve myself. But remember that everyone has their darkness, just as everyone has their light.'

'Even vampires,' Sookie smiled quietly up at him.

'Even Viking vampires even a psychopathic lack of remorse and penchant for dyeing their hair, I fear.'

'Stranger things have happened.'

The turn to her voice – the hopeful lilt combined with deep remorse – made Eric's thoughts stutter and fray. He leant down and, taking her jaw in his fingers, kissed her hard on the mouth. She breathed into him, and it was like their bodies opened up to absorb the other, two thoraxes opening to reveal beating hearts, ribcages meshing and intertwining, sinew knitting to create a complete person. Who knew you needed two hearts to be whole, Eric thought. Who knew I was missing all my body all this time, thought Sookie.

Eric pulled away, and smiled. His smile spread up to his eyes, imparting some strange fiendish twinkle under his retinas that seemed absurdly out of keeping with his careful façade. It bared his fangs, glittering wickedly under the dim lighting.

'It's not a dichotomy, you know. There's not a finite number of bad and good things inside you that can be taken out and lined up and weighed against each other. You and I have bad, good and grey all swirling together, fighting and balancing endlessly. And you have imagination, resourcefulness, ruthlessness and the desire to protect those you love.'

'And you have cunning, wit, powerful loyalty, respect for responsibility, and painful honesty. It's honestly impressive you've managed to commit as many bad deeds as you have.'

Eric laughed and kissed her again, softer, teasing at her lips. 'What a pair we make,' he muttered into her mouth. Sookie moaned inaudibly into him, knees swinging round to press against his. His thumb behind her ear and fingers around the back of her neck seemed like brands of heat, despite being icy cold.

'Oh, Eric, I think we're disturbing your patrons.' Sookie pulled away, laughing quietly. Eric looked around at the transfixed customers as Sookie whispered in his ear, 'I just noticed they'd all gone very quiet in my head.' Some had the decency to look away awkwardly as Eric made defensive eye contact, but others gazed in open awe or lust at the pair. The bass tripped and thudded as loudly as before, but the subdued human/vampire noise rang clearly in the dim room.

'My office?' Eric whispered back. Sookie nodded, hardly able to reply to the intensity in his voice. 'Please, good patrons,' Eric spoke melodiously over the music, 'return to your grinding and imbibing. It's rude to stare.'

He whisked Sookie out of the bar and past the white door of the office. The light was white and painful after the haze, illuminating the dark grain of the desk, the heels propped up on it and Pam's blonde head behind it.

'Pamela, don't you have a job to do?' Eric growled.

'Jesus, and I thought vampires were more evolved than rabbits,' Pam drawled, an eyebrow raised.

'Pam…' The threat in Eric's voice heightened.

'Alright, alright, I'll go _mingle,_ ' Pam's disgust was palpable. 'Maybe I'll pretend we need to audition more dancers.'

The door closed softly. Sookie felt as though the light had flooded every crevasse. It astonished her – each angle and subtlety of Eric's face was made bare. He looked both harder and more open. His eyes were like wells of indeterminate emotion; something deep and strong that tugged at her navel resided there, but she wasn't sure whether to be afraid or drawn by it.

'You're quite beautiful, you know, Eric.' Sookie smiled at the absurdity of her words. 'Not that you need to be reminded or nothin'. But you're all hard and vulnerable, deep and shallow at the same time. Like eddies in a big sea.'

Eric grinned and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 'You are right about something.' His fangs flashed out and he wrapped his hands around her waist. 'I am, indeed, hard.'

Her grin grew sly. 'What a line! I sure as heck hope you don't use that on all the girls.'

He tugged her against him and hooked on of her knees up, bringing her flush against him like two well made parts. She tried to muffle her sharp gasp.

'If I did, I think it would probably work.'

Eric's hand shifted lower, sliding under her skirt and folding around her hips. The pressure on her hipbones felt like a promise of release.

'Not particularly smooth though, as lines go,' Sookie muttered, trying to resist the urge to push herself even closer. She felt consumed – as though they were Russian dolls and she wasn't sure whether she was the littlest one or the biggest.

Eric exhaled shakily and she felt the rigid desire in his grasp, in the tension of his abdomen, and against her cunt. It was a case of waiting to see who broke first. Whoever shifted would tip the balance of the universe forever and they would be done, dissolved into sensation. The anticipation filled them up; the pressure condensed them into motes of desire, pressed against each other's skeletons. Eric bent down to kiss her, claim her mouth, ravage and repair her, and the motion pulled her hips up against his. They were gone, fallen into one another without hope of return. Eric fell back against the desk, and Sookie hooked her knees up. Dress and shirt and belt and trousers were gone and the touch of skin on skin was rebirth. Sookie's centre of mass was cosmically aligned with Eric's groin and everywhere they touched, Sookie's hammering pulse gave him life. Friction built and built until Sookie swore she could feel heat shimmering in the air.

'Fuck, Eric, I'm about to spontaneously combust,' she gasped into his neck.

'No, Sook, you're about to come.'

She could feel his smirk against her shoulder, and her hips ground out a reply that made him moan into her collarbone.


	3. Chapter 3

'I didn't think this world ever gave you somethin' for nothin',' Sookie murmured somewhere against his side, as they lay wrapped in each other in her bed.

'Don't question it, don't interrogate it, don't tempt fate,' Eric muttered back, somewhere between a plea and an incantation. 'If there's anything I've learnt in my thousand years, it's that good things burn bright and fast, and you can only enjoy them while they last.'

'My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night, but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light,' Sookie mumbled even softer, the words nuzzling and hissing, soft and salubrious against his ribs. He caught the clean flare of white tea lights behind his eyelids, and the radiant glow spread into his thorax. Everything was charged from Sookie's fingertips on his skin. He felt out of time, out of circadian rhythms, and into warmth indeterminate. He was foetal, not vampire, suspended in the vast uterus of space-time that cushioned him and held him against his lover.

'A fairy spell?' he turned into her, and she felt the stretch of the tendons in his neck.

'Heck no,' she giggled, 'I think it was somethin' Roald Dahl liked – the English guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I remember Gran readin' it to me from the inside cover of Charlie when I was really little. Not sure I understood what it meant, but I must have memorised it.'

Her nerves singed with the contact of him.

'Maybe Roland Doll was a fairy?'

'Roald Dahl, stupid,' she bent in and nipped at his shoulder blade with her blunt, pearlescent teeth. 'Maybe he was a vampire.'

'Maybe he was a vampire in love with a fairy.' She just heard it whispered inaudibly over her hair. The words caught in each strand, coloured it golden and glittering. The soft pressure of the thought on her scalp was like goosebumps and pins and needles, all jumbled, and it made her heart falter and surge.

'Actually, I think he was a racist. You know the Oompa-loompas?'

'No, Sook, I don't.' Eric laughed at the crease in her brows.

'I forget that Vikings don't have time for 60's kids books.'

'I wonder what else we could have on our minds.'

'Killing, probably.'

'Or sex – don't forget sex.' He tried to match her nonchalant tone and ignore the hand tracing mandalas on his stomach.

A husky chuckle from Sookie, 'How could I?'

'How do you spell old Ronald's name again?'

'R-O-A-L-D, I think. Still not Ronald, or Roland.'

'You th _aa_ nk, you do?' he laughed, twisting the word into her Southern vowels. 'I th _aa_ nk you'll find it's said Roall. Silent d. He was probably of Norwegian descent. A distant Viking, in fact.'

'Learn somethin' new every day. It's why I keep you around.' She smirked up at him, jubilant.

Eric's face remained impassive, bar a slight lift of an eyebrow he hastily stifled. 'Is that so?' She felt him shift slightly next to him, and his shoulder tensed. 'No other reason you can think of?'

She bit down on her bottom lip, hard, quelling a guttural moan as she felt him push two fingers into her. She could almost feel the ID hidden in the whorls of every epidermal ridge of his fingertips. It pushed her nearer and nearer to the edge of her being, the weight and the pressure plucking at her viscera. She buried her head into his shoulder, blushing, overcome, but he wound his other hand in her hair and cradled her to meet his gaze. His pupils were blown black, framed in icy lapis lazuli frightening in its intensity.

'Don't be ashamed of yourself, Sookie. Let me see how you feel.'

He stroked at her, flat pad of thumb rubbing circles of unbearable friction on her clit. She gave up, giving into the sticky hot sensation of it, the tense and coil, and her head fell back as she exhaled shakily. The column of her neck, so slender and soft, was lines of ancient poetry to Eric, odes and arias and laments. His teeth weighed heavy on his lips, but to mar that skin was infamy – blasphemy!

'Eric, you're bleeding,' Sookie's eyes spoke concern inlaid with desire.

He laughed, and she could feel it in his fingertips buried inside her, thrust and twist. 'Must have bitten my own lips – how provocative. Shall I bat my eyelids too?' He tried a simpering half-smile and a flicker of his eyelashes that faded into his typical wild, toothy grin.

Sookie shifted her hips experimentally, delighted to elicit a quiet gasp from Eric. 'I think you may have already succeeded in seducing me, my good woman,' she said in her best Swedish accent.

'Nice accent. But you may stake me on the day I say good woman.'

'Like I'd need permission to stake you.'

'You make a fair point. I do seem quite vulnerable at current moment.'

' _You_ feel vulnerable? Imagine how I feel,' she blushed, and buried her head in his chest again, breathing heavily against his sternum. Her entire body was incandescent, fluttering and beating in time with her heart.

Eric shifted their bodies, free hand wrapping around her hips, until he was propped on his elbow and she was laid out on her back, pressed against his side. The angle of his fingers was sinful.

'Stop hiding, Sookie Stackhouse. You look extraordinary – it's inhuman to cover it.'

Her back arched involuntarily as she met Eric's eyes. 'You're still biting your lip! How do you expect it to heal?'

'Fangs are tricky. It's involuntary or something,' he mumbled, uncharacteristically shame-faced.

'Get down here, Eric,' Sookie laughed, and wrapped her hands around his head, thumb tracing his bleeding lip, guiding his mouth to her. Her back arched into a deep S with her shaking bent knees, as she came up onto her elbows to kiss him hard. She laved his lip with her tongue, nipping and pulling at it, feeling the slight wince in his jaw under her hand. She probed at his fangs, and the kiss grew heavier until she forgot about respiration or circulation – anything apart from the pressure of his lips against hers and his fingers inside her.

The iron salt of his bloody lip raced in her body thick and sweet and she felt the pressure of her united nervous system overloading once again. She had no legs, no limbs whatsoever, and she shook through the remnants of her blown body. The fuse filament melted, the lamp shattered, the door slammed, a single bead of sweat dripped off her tight stomach, and the world was briefly aligned. Eric grinned against her lips as he felt her come apart in his hands.

Sookie twisted until she was knelt over him, trying to still her trembling chest. Eric was overcome with the feeling of awe again, struck dumb by the savage beauty of the moment, and let his head fall back into a pillow. She held his forearm and slid slowly off his hand, eyes fluttering closed. They wound their hands together, both panting again, revelling in the slick stickiness, the unabashed truth of sex. Eric kissed her fingertips.

'I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens, only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all the roses. Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands,' Eric whispered, furtively, as though the words were too much for him. He looked up, 'e.e. cummings. Seemed appropriate somehow,' and grinned toothily.

Sookie returned the grin, but something lingered behind, something quiet and frightened.

'Sook, Sookie, are you okay?'

She shook her head dismissively, squeezing his hands reassuringly, 'No, no, I'm fine. More than fine, really. I just…'

Eric unknit their hands and held her hips, guiding her core to his navel. He'd seen the slight tremor in her thighs from holding herself above him. The weight and heat of her on his abdomen was like sunlight and victory. He waited for her to speak.

'I just – it's so good it's makin' me afraid. After this, how am I ever supposed to get out of bed again? How am I supposed to go back to life, and daytime, and bein' a waitress, when I know _this_? When I know _you_?'

'I'm not sure I can let you leave this bed anytime soon,' Eric grinned again, and quickly composed himself. 'But, Sookie Stackhouse, I hope to reassure you that I am not just libido and blood. I'm fond of Cervantes' toilet humour, and Monty Python, and Auden, and Keats, and Yeats, and even German EDM, and Tarantino, and Gus Van Sant. I can even play the ukulele. I can be argumentative, childish, and selfish, and I can make you orgasm with just two fingers. But I am not everything.'

'I'm afraid you might be,' Sookie murmured, the pain painted across her brow.

'No, Sookie, I'm not. I love you, but I do _not_ own you. I am not selfish enough to think I can fully satisfy you. I can overwhelm you, and I will – I will love you with everything that I am, both bad and good, but I expect nothing from you.'

'Why am I afraid of bein' – well, of bein' in love with you? It feels like heartache.'

'Sookie, that's what love is.' Eric folded her in his arms and kissed her, desperate to take from her the burden of fear and isolation. It felt like solace and salt.

'Although,' he said, pulling away, 'I'm probably not the easiest to – ah – integrate into your life. Compatible lifestyles and all that.'

Sookie snorted.

'Again?'

'Yes, Eric, I snorted, deal with it. Fuck compatibility.'

'Here, here, fuck the damn compatibility,' Eric chuckled incoherently under his breath, kissing Sookie's jaw and neck and clavicles and sternum as she sat, hot and needy, on his stomach.

'Eric, please bite me?'

It was whispered like a supplication, and filled Eric with longing that ran parallel to the bloodlust coursing through him. He felt weak and light-headed, a strange feeling for a vampire asked to feed.

She placed her hands ever so gently on the edge of his jaw, guiding him to sit up as she went up, up on her knees and arched backward. His hands guided her hips down and around him, and the ecstasy of it was like a whispering rattle of a morning breeze. Eric felt each muscle tense around him until her pubic bone ground against his, eliciting a groan. Sookie guided his lips to her neck, and, like a blind infant, he felt the truth of the nourishment offered to him, the promise of life, and strength and vitality coursing under her skin. His teeth flawed her skin so easily, and the blood ran in scarlet rivulets.


	4. Chapter 4

In her dream, Sookie was trying to cartwheel, but every time she kicked up the ground lurched and she sprawled over. She could feel the strain in her sides, abdominal muscles tensing to straighten the curl of her spine and pull her hips over her shoulders before the earth spun vertiginously. The balls of her feet pushed on the ground desperately, ankles flicking into a straining pointed toe like the snapping wrists of a basketball player taking a shot, but to no avail.

She fell bruisingly hard again and again, onto her shoulders, the small of her back, her ass, and each time she crawled up to standing and tried once more. At some point, the awareness of external light and tangled sheets crept through, pulling uncomfortably at her strange sleeping reality, but still she struggled up on the dreamscape grass, shielding her eyes at the watery light, and fell at the apex of another hopeless cartwheel. Some detached part of her consciousness, stretching out the kinks in its back in the dawn, wondered loudly why she was so desperate to avoid opening her eyes, and grudgingly, painfully, Sookie allowed the dream to slip away. Adele had taught her to recognise good sense, even if it was her own good sense.

Still, she scrunched up her eyes as she let waking sentience wash over her. It made her eyelids crinkle and look black and solid and reassuring – the world was just a cocoon, warm and dark, and she could let it muffle her. But then, indomitable, ineffable, inescapable, inimitable, inevitable light began tinting the corners of the swathes of darkness yellow and gold and orange, and Sookie knew she was fucked.

It was definitely daylight, and so Eric must be gone.

She opened her eyes to a blaze of colour; verdant green boughs sighing breathlessly in the still morning air past half open peach curtains, warming white window frames and clapboard, glimpses of terracotta earth baking under a fierce pale yellow sun, lapis lazuli sky deep and high and clear. The light glanced off the polished wooden floors, illuminating the bed frame in sharp, bright outline, casting patches of dappled sun on the wallpaper, casting dark shadows in the crumples of Sookie's sheets and the almost imperceptible indent in the pillow next to her.

She felt desolate.

Swinging her feet out of bed, she began to notice the knotted soreness of her body. The dull ache gave her a strange sense of satisfaction. She walked in front of her mirror and pulled up her shirt to reveal dark, widely spaced bruises on her hips. Five on each hip, she thought bitterly, each bruise about the size of a quarter – now there's a clue. No one else has such huge hands. The bite on her neck was livid above her collar. So it was real. Not some absurd dream prelude to bad gymnastics, but _real_.

She stripped methodically and walked into the shower, trying to ignore the fact she could smell him in her hair and on her skin. The hot water fell on her upturned face and she hoped it would wash away her thoughts. She towelled herself dry, pulled on her bathing suit and jean shorts, and wandered absently downstairs, feeling cold despite the sun streaming in every window.

Sookie lay outside in the gathering heat until the sun was directly overhead, trying to recapture the feeling of acceptable aloneness only found in dreams. Asleep, you always expected to be alone, wandering deep in the recesses of your paltry imagination – it was the awareness of waking loneliness that bit – she winced – _cut_ painfully into Sookie's marrow. She dozed, and the sun beat down on the convex arch of her thorax and the apples of her shoulders and the tops of her thighs and feet and the flush of her breasts and sternum above her suit. Maybe she would shrivel in the sun, she thought, until all that's left of her would be a tiny Sookie-flavoured raisin. Yummy.

The harshness of the sun began to burn away the hurt, and Sookie began to probe at it, like you'd tentatively poke at your split lip with your tongue. First was a feeling of inconsolable abandonment that made her feel ashamed. She wanted to have woken to the feeling of him pressed against her back, arm wrapped around her middle, nose pressed in her hair, instead of the stark, sunlit emptiness. Then came the deep, wallowing fear. She had told him – _Him_ – that she loved him. Not in so many words, but it had been true, and, she thought quietly, was still true. Now she felt weak, lonely and vulnerable. But somewhere, buried deep, pushed down, she sensed her own elation. She had claimed Eric Northman, however briefly, and it had made her indescribably happy.

As she stared up into the vast depths of ether, some part of her knew and recognised that it hid an endless darkness of cold, beautiful, lifeless space, and yet still the sun filled her, laved at her, kneaded her. Not a bad metaphor, she grinned up at the sky.

 _Shit! What's the time? I'm going to miss my shift._

She jumped out of the chair and ran inside, shucking off her bathing suit and pulling on underwear and t-shirt and black shorts. She fished her car keys off the lintel, slammed the door behind her and jumped into her car, gunning it for Merlotte's.

The moment Sookie walked in the door Lafayette proclaimed, 'You late.' Hearing no response, he looked up from the shot of gin he was pouring and gave her a slow once-over, assessing her plain face and loose hair. He cocked his head, and asked, 'Girl, have you eaten today? 'Cos I betting you have not.'

He smirked at the look of dismay on her face. 'I knows it. Come back round here, and Lafayette'll fry you up some lunch. You needs to get some grease in you, girl.'

The afternoon passed slowly after she'd devoured her fries and chicken under Lafayette's watchful eye – the few customers moved in and out in a slow waltz, passing through the beams of sunlight tinted by the dusty windows. She poured a beer, and its translucent amber distortion of the bar through the glass was a perfect microcosm of the whole slow moving universe. A sleepy afternoon in a sleepy Southern town. And no one so much as glanced at the fading bite mark on her neck.

Inexorably, time wore on, and the day began to cool. Insightful as ever, Lafayette called Sookie over and, after some careful deliberation over the rows of spirits, poured her a gin and tonic. The pace picked up as regulars wandered in and distributed themselves down the length of the bar and couples tucked themselves into booths and high schoolers flocked around the pool table. This was her element – the sure balance of tray on hand among the audible and psychic hubbub of self-involved bar patrons as day bled into night. She settled into the pace, circling around tables, ready smile, neat stacking of plates, and settling into the humanity.

Predictably, this was when the deep pool of untouchable silence walked through the door and folded his long limbs into the last empty booth. Eric looked incongruous among the faux red leather, menu in hand, but still absurdly (and characteristically, Sookie thought) self-satisfied.

'Sookie.'

'What can I get you?'

He grinned and passed her the menu. 'Just a Tru-Blood, if you please.' His eyes roved dangerously over her as she nodded and turned to go, and quickly lit upon the marks on her neck. The ecstatic smile that broke across his face was somewhere between blood-curdling and angelic. She lifted her hand to trace the punctures without thinking and, blushing at the sudden drop of his fangs, turned on her heels. She spun back round to him. 'I'll be right back with your Tru-Blood.' And off she went, shaking her head.

The moment she stepped away from his table, the human noise enveloped her again, calming her as she programed the microwave and waited for the obnoxious _ding_. She carried the warm bottle back across the room between her hands.

Sookie felt aware of walking precisely and precariously down a dividing line. On one side was the hot sun, and hugs, and family, and the well-intentioned, mouth-breathing, inappropriate human masses decked in flannels and ugly baseball caps, and gin and tonics after French fries, and on the other was bruises, and ecstasy, and the warm and impossible honesty of just after midnight, and _Eric_. As she placed the Tru-Blood down, his hand reached across the tabletop to take it from her, and their fingertips brushed.

And it collapsed completely – the whole arbitrary segregation fell in on itself with a surge of pulse. She could almost see the dust clear from the rubble.

Sookie leaned in and kissed him, hard and deep. She felt his fangs pressing on her lower lips and the desperate sigh he released against her mouth when she – finally – touched him properly. He reached up to lightly touch his fingers to her pierced neck. Pulling away, she smiled.

'Stay until I get off work?'

She turned back into the babble before she heard his answer, ducking to pick an abandoned spoon off the floor.


End file.
